Building Societies drive me mad!

So Thursday was Frustrating - but so was Friday. Next week is the deadline for ISAs and although I had added the requisite amount to mine we couldn't do Di's because hers was a fixed interest that we couldn't add to - so we needed to start a new one. So called the Halifax to ask for an appointment to set one up for her. No appointments available today - can do tomorrow (sorry - we can't - Di at a dog show) - or next Monday or Tuesday (nope - I'm working away).

So I was about to say "Don't worry - we'll open one with Nationwide" when she said that if we were transferring the money from another Halifax account we could do it over the phone. "Great" says I "that's exactly what we are wanting to do!"

Now I should explain that we did have a high rate saver account in Halifax that we had saved in for years but the rate had now dropped to something like 0.00000000000000001%, so we had decided to use that money to top up our 2 ISA's. You can save up to £5,100 and we had just under £10k in there so when we topped up mine in December we asked the girl to leave £5,100 in there so we could open a new one for Di later, put the rest in my ISA and I would add the missing amount to make it up to £5,100. So that's what we did.

Or rather that's what we should have did! But Miss Cashier got it wrong and by the time she had finished we had £5,096 and a few pennies left - not £5,100. Never mind.

So when we set up Di's ISA by phone we said we wanted to transfer the complete balance from that account into her ISA and close the old account. So there should have been some interest.

"Yes there is", says the phone adviser, "with the interest in brings the amount to £5,100.50.

"Fine," we said, "transfer the £5,100 and you can put the 50p into your charity funding.

"Not allowed to do that," came the reply

"OK," we said, "we understand, " then transfer the £5,100 and leave the 50p in the account"

"Not allowed to do that," came the reply, "you have to have a minimum of £1 in the account!"

So in the end we transferred what was in there and left the interest on the account.

Why do they make it so difficult? It's our money - if I want to leave 50p in the account why not? What happened to the idea that the customer was (occasionally) right?!